Celebrating Shakespeare's 400th in Gashlycrumb Fashion

Last weekend marked the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. This was celebrated worldwide, but especially in England, where all kinds of events have been happening, like the Royal Shakespeare Company's star-studded Shakespeare Live!, which is supposed to be shared in cinemas worldwide in May. In the United States, Chicago has also made a splash with its ongoing mix of art, theater, video and food.

I was moved to celebrate in my own way by composing a faux-Gorey poem (like the "Gashlycrumb Tinies" and their rhyming couplets) covering some of the deaths in Shakespeare. This isn't the sort of thing I usually do -- I do not believe I have the rhyming gene and I'm terrible in general when it comes to poetry -- so when the idea struck me, I asked my husband to help. He does have the rhyming gene and he's much better with rhythm and meter. I shared the ones I knew I wanted to start with, the famous, funny ones like Antigonus, who was pursued by a bear, and Tamora's sons, who were baked in a pie by Titus Andronicus. My husband said immediately that he felt certain someone else (or several someone elses) had already done up Shakespeare's deaths a la Edward Gorey and I said, oh well, I'm having fun, I don't want to see what other people have done and get their choices in my head, so I'm just going to do it, anyway. He also noted that I was going to have trouble when I got to X, Y and Z, and I said, well, I have Y, anyway, what with Yorick and the skull plucked from a grave in Hamlet, and surely Shakespeare referred to somebody like Zeus at some point. Maybe I'd even get lucky and find a Xanthus or Xenia.

So off I set, armed with my copy of "Who's Who in Shakespeare." I traversed X just fine, what with Petruchio invoking the name of Xanthippe in The Taming of the Shrew, but there was no Zeus, only Zenelophon. And when I googled Zenelophon to see who she was, I mistakenly typed "Zenepholon" instead, and one Twitter post popped up, because it also spelled it wrong. It was part of a conversation from someone named Robin Johnson who'd done a Gorey-esque poem about the deaths in Shakespeare! In April 2015! And so my husband was right again.

Since I was already at Z, I didn't think I would be unduly influenced, so I read Robin Johnson's poem, which doesn't have that much overlap in terms of who he chose or how he dispatched them, but is better than mine in several ways -- it scans much better, plus he was much more clever with Hamlet and some others -- but I do prefer my Xanthippe and Zenelophon. He also seems to have concentrated on more major characters, so he has Anthony instead of Antigonus, for example. But Antigonus and his bear were one of the reasons I undertook it, so I wasn't at all sorry to have kept them. When it got to Z, Johnson's poem went with "in 38 plays, no one's name starts with Z," with his British Z pronounced "zed," which rhymes with "York, whom the queen orders dead." That's all nifty, but I was determined to find a way to work with Yorick and Zenelophon.

In the end, here's what I did:

A is for Antigonus, pursued by a bear
B is for Banquo, not really there

C is for Cleopatra, dispatched by an asp
D is for Desdemona, choked in jealousy's grasp

E is for Emilia, a victim of rage
F is for Falstaff, dying off-stage

G is for George, the one drowned in a butt
H is for Hamlet, slashed by Laertes' cut

I is for Iras, loyally bit
J is for Julius, a political hit

K is for Katherine, lonely and sad
L is for Lavinia, killed by her dad

M is for Macbeth, slain by one ripped from the womb
N is for Ninus, who had a big tomb

O is for Ophelia, submerged in a brook
P is for Polonius, for a rat mistook

Q is for Quintus, beheaded, of course
R is for Richard, who needed a horse

S is for Suffolk, banished to die
T is for Tamora's sons, baked in a pie

U is for Uther, carried on a cot
V is for Vaughn, executed in a plot

W is for Wolsey, to his king untrue
X is for Xanthippe, a scold and a shrew

Y is for Yorick, his skull polished clean
Z is for Zenelophon, from beggar to queen

And that's what I did on the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. I may not have put this up on April 23rd, but I did write it on the 23rd. My husband didn't want to comment on my meter (he is too kind) but I know I am no master. I just had fun. (J is for Julie, who died via rhyme...)

Humana Festival 2016: Sarah Ruhl's FOR PETER PAN ON HER 70th BIRTHDAY

If there was a marquee event at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays, it had to be Sarah Ruhl's For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday.

Ruhl is currently at the top of the American playwriting ladder; her In the Next Room, or the vibrator play had a Broadway production with multiple Tony nominations, while Stage Kiss, eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone and The Clean House (among others) played Off-Broadway and have subsequently been produced all over the country, including across central Illinois. Ruhl was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, as well as winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Whiting Award, the Lilly Award and a PEN Award.

When Ruhl came to Louisville for the Humana Festival, her play got Actors Theatre's artistic director, Les Waters, as its director, with an A-list cast, including Kathleen Chalfant, a multiple Tony nominee herself. It doesn't get much better than that.

Kathleen Chalfant in For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday.
Photo Credit: Bill Brymer

So how did her Peter Pan do? In performance, Ruhl's script for Peter Pan showed enough wit to keep it buoyant, a sweet affection for its characters, especially Ann, the one played by Chalfant, and just a shade of sadness. You might expect "I don't want to grow up" as a theme, given the title, and that's definitely there, but it's part of a larger issue, when growing up involves saying goodbye to the generation ahead of us.

It's become something of a running joke that critics inevitably try to find some sort of overall theme for each year's Humana Festival, although the people at Actors Theatre swear they don't pick plays to suit any one idea. This year, American Theatre's Russell M. Dembin touches on the theory that ghosts provided the Festival's throughline. While there were certainly a number of ghosts, for me, confronting mortality emerged as a more pervasive theme, especially within parent/child relationships. That's front and center in For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, as Ann and her siblings gather to deal with their father's death.

The cast of For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday.
Photo credit: Bill Brymer

When the play opens, Ann, her sister Wendy, and her brothers Jim, John and Michael sit and wait in their beloved dad's hospital room. Two of Ann's brothers are doctors, as was their father, so they're well aware he doesn't have much time. From there, the play moves to the five of them at the old kitchen table, drinking, reminiscing and arguing during Dad's wake, and then into a sort of dream sequence where each takes on a role in Peter Pan, which Ann starred in as a child.

I don't know how many 70-year-old actresses there are in the world who'd be willing to step into Peter Pan's tights and fly around the stage, but Chalfant is game, as are the younger-but-not-exactly-young Lisa Emery, who plays Wendy, and Scott Jaeck (John), David Chandler (Jim) and Keith Reddin (Michael). The roles they play in Ann's life are reflected in their Peter Pan roles, as well, although the political talking points they hurl at each other and how that sets up Captain Hook in the play-within-a-play come off somewhat forced as a dramatic device.

What was best about the Humana Festival For Peter Pan was, in a word, Chalfant. She had the audience in the palm of her hand from her curtain speech to her flying game, and she made Ruhl's words come alive with the elegance and expertise of her delivery. Looking at the words on the page, I found they don't seem nearly as funny as they did when Kathleen Chalfant was saying them.

Ron Crawford, who played the father they'd all come to honor, also emerged as a major presence in the play, even when he was lying motionless in a hospital bed. His contributions to the second scene -- what Ruhl calls "Movement Two: The Irish Wake" -- were especially well-received, as his timing and wry humor paid off nicely.

Chandler, Emery, Jaeck and Reddin each etched an individual portrait and together with Chalfant, they created a recognizable family dynamic, the kind where being together throws you right back up against the same buttons you've been pushing since you were kids. We don't really ever grow up, after all.

One other strength: A local marching band that came in to cover the scene change between Movements One and Two, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." It was perfect. Here's hoping other productions will find their own marching bands if For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday pops up in regional theaters.

OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD Puts on a Play for Bradley University Theatre

Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good has been a popular choice for theatres ever since Wertenbaker wrote the play in 1988. The script may be catnip for directors and actors because it's about theater, about the power and danger of bringing drama to people at the bottom of the social ladder, but it also delves into colonialism, the long reach of the British Empire, crime and punishment, sex, class and love, and how human beings try to keep their humanity alive.

All of that is wound around the story of a group of convicts in 18th century Australia putting on a play -- George Farquhar's Restoration comedy, The Recruiting Officer -- as directed by their British overlords. The convicts, all sent to an Australian penal colony for offenses back in England, are very different people, but they're all in desperate straits, with nothing to call their own. It's how they interact with and affect the Royal Marines who are in charge of them that forms the drama in Wertenbaker's play, with one indigenous Australian who keeps a watchful eye on the proceedings.

Bradley University's production of Our Country's Good opened last night in the Meyer Jacobs Theatre in the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts. Assistant Professor Susan Felder directs a cast that includes Trevor Baty, Cody Cornwell, Amanda Dacks, Chris Dolphin, Cassy Lillwitz, Kyle Peck, Ali Pinkerton, Aris-Allen Roberson, Ellie Stamper, Derek Yeghiazarian and Samantha Zucker in multiple roles, crossing over between officers and convicts. The cast and crew shared mug-shot style photos of themselves that you can see here:

Click on the photo to see it larger size.

Performances of Our Country's Good continue at Bradley through May 1 at 8 pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2:30 pm on Sunday. For ticket information, call 309-677-2650, visit www.bradley.edu/theatre or check out the production's Facebook page.

New Route Theatre's VOICES OF PRIDE Starts Friday

New Route Theatre's Voices of Pride Festival of new plays begins this week, with staged readings presented Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Bloomington's First Christian Church at 401 West Jefferson Street. Tickets will be available at the door for a suggested donation of $10. This event is dedicated to the memory of Phil Shaw.

This festival, which consists of four new plays with LGBT themes, is presented in conjunction with the Prairie Pride Coalition. Illinois State University Assistant Professor Duane Boutté curated the program and directs two of them. Here's the schedule of events:

APRIL 22 
7 pm
garbage can blues, written by Paula Ressler, Associate Professor in the English Department at Illinois State University. Directed by Duane Boutté.

8:30 pm
ReConnect, written by DC Cathro, a playwright from Maryland. Directed by New Route Theatre Artistic Director Don Shandrow.

APRIL 23 
7 pm
Thingification, written and performed by Duriel E. Harris, a Creative Writing Associate Professor in the English Department at Illinois State University. Directed by Duane Boutté and assistant directed by Gina Cleveland.

8:30 pm
Bedfellows, written by Daniel Kipp, a playwright from Rock Island who is also a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University. Directed by Don Shandrow.

APRIL 24
2 pm
garbage can blues  

4:30pm
ReConnect

6 pm
Thingification

7:30 pm
Bedfellows

Peg Kirk and Troy Schaeflein are the cast of Paula Ressler's garbage can blues, described as "the haunting tale of a lesbian mother struggling to come to terms with the circumstances of her son's demise as she questions any role she may have played. Performed in a single act, garbage can blues reads with artful precision. Mrs. Ressler's careful strokes paint a mother-son relationship that delivers enduring questions about society's judgement of non-traditional families, and its affect on modern youth."

Cathro's ReConnect features Nathan Brandon Gaik, Brigette Richard, George Jackson, Joseph Johnson, Samuel James Willis, Daniel Esquivel, Marya Manak, Kelsey Brunner, Rachel Hettrick, Anastasia Ferguson and Graham Gusloff in a "a delightfully poignant series of six short one act plays that center on the reunions of eleven different people and the surprise, pain and awareness that reconnecting brings.

Thingification expands on performance poems by Harris called "Phaneric Displays," and it includes excerpts from other published works from Harris like "Amnesiac: Poems, and Drag." In Thingification, Harris will perform "a progression of vivid characters from southern cotton fields to big city dance clubs, resulting in a compelling discourse on African American identity and empowerment."

Duane Boutté and Dave Krostal are featured in Kipp's Bedfellows, which covers three different moments in the lives of two men, focusing on "their relationship during moments of dynamic political change. They meet on election night of 1992. We then see them just before the election in 2000 and then finally just after the election in 2008. A bittersweet exploration of how time and politics influence a relationship."

New Route Theatre and Artistic Director Don Shandrow have indicated that they hope to make this an annual event to go along with the Black Voices Matter festival presented in February.

For more information regarding New Route Theatre and the Voices of Pride Festival, you are asked to contact Shandrow at new.route.theatre@gmail.com or visit the New Route Facebook page.

Pulitzer Prize for Drama Goes to Lin-Manuel Miranda and HAMILTON

Hamilton, the incredibly popular musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer committee calls Hamilton, "A landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible."

Hamilton becomes only the ninth musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama since it started in 1918, after Of Thee I Sing* by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin, awarded in 1932; South Pacific by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan, in 1950; Fiorello! with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, awarded in 1960; How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Abe Burrows,  in 1962; A Chorus Line, by by Michael Bennett, James Kirkwood, Jr., Marvin Hamlisch, Nicholas Dante and Edward Kleban, awarded in 1976, Sunday in the Park with George, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine, in 1985; Jonathan Larson's Rent in 1996, and Next to Normal, by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, in 2010.

This year's finalists were Gloria, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "whip-smart satire" that looks at media, violence and ambition, and The Humans, Stephen Karam's unsettling drama about a middle-class family in decline.


*The Pulitzer Prize for Of Thee I Sing did not include George Gershwin, who composed its music. Richard Rodgers, who wrote the score for South Pacific, was a recipient, however, as the Pulitzer committee had decided by that point that a musical's music was an important part of its overall worthiness for the award.

Qui Nguyen Wins Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for VIETGONE

Image for The Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Qui Nguyen's Vietgone

This year's top Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award has been awarded to Qui Nguyen's Vietgone, called "an all-American love story about two very new Americans" in South Coast Rep's description of the play's premiere production last year. The quote continues: "It’s 1975, and Saigon has fallen. He lost his wife. She lost her fiancé. But now in a new land, they just might find each other. Using his uniquely infectious style The New York Times calls 'culturally savvy comedy'—and skipping back and forth from the dramatic evacuation of Saigon to the here and now—playwright Qui Nguyen gets up close and personal to tell the story that led to the creation of…Qui Nguyen."

Qui Nguyen

Vietgone is currently playing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; it will play Off-Broadway this fall, with previews beginning October 4 at New York City Center's Stage I, presented by Manhattan Theatre Club.

The Steinberg/ATCA New Play Awards recognize playwrights for outstanding work that premiered professionally outside New York City during the previous year. The prize comes with a $25,000 top award, this year given to Nguyen, along with two $7500 citations, which were awarded to Steven Dietz, for his play Bloomsday, and Jen Silverman, for her play The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane. With a combined cash prize of $40,000, the Steinberg/ATCA Award is the largest national new play award program of its kind. 

Dietz's Bloomsday received its world premiere at ACT Theatre in Seattle. ATCA panelists who read the play during judging described it as "Tender, beautiful, and heartbreaking." The play involves two characters, one a Dublin guide who takes people to see locations from James Joyce's Ulysses and the other an American who isn't at all familiar with the book. Their brief meeting is "complicated and enhanced by visits from their 35-years-later selves.

The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane is set in a safe house for women in South Africa, with Silverman using the story of a soccer star who returns to her native land in search of a missing lover who also happens to be a political activist to explore issues of violence toward women, media and politics, and what it means to go home again. Silverman's play was first produced at Philadelphia's Interact Theatre Company.

The other three finalists for the award were Samuel D. Hunter for Clarkston, Lynn Nottage for Sweat, and Jonathan Norton for Mississippi Goddamn. Norton took home the 2016 ATCA M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award, which was also awarded April 9, during the final weekend of the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The American Theatre Critics Association gives the Osborn New Play Award to an emerging playwright who has not yet received national attention.

Lou Harry, arts and entertainment editor for the Indianapolis Business Journal and IBJ.com/arts chairs ATCA's New Plays Committee, which selects honorees for both the Steinberg/ATCA Awards and the Osborn Award.

Tonight's the Night for AN EVENING with Eli Van Sickel (and Friends)

Illinois State University alum Eli Van Sickel is directing An Evening full of theatre. And it's in Chicago. Tonight. More specifically, An Evening is tonight at 7 pm at Lifeline Theatre.

Van Sickel has put together a program of short scenes, with selections from newer work like John Logan's Red, Neil Labute's Reasons to Be Pretty, Julia Jordan's Nightswim and Songs for a New World, Jason Robert Brown's heartfelt song cycle, along with classic pieces like Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty.

This is how Eli describes his Evening:

Eli Van Sickel has spent his entire life in the theatre. He holds a BS in Directing from Indiana State University and an MS in Theatre Studies from Illinois State University. He has worked professionally as a freelance sound designer for the last eight years. He has not directed a play since he was in school, five years ago. He has been too afraid to pursue a career as a theatre director...until now. In order to dust off the cobwebs and see if he’s worth a damn, Eli has put together an evening of scenes entitled AN EVENING. The performance will take place on Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm at Lifeline Theatre.

David F. Meldman and James Martineau will perform the Red scene, with Devon Nimerfroh and Kristen Hughes in Reasons to Be Pretty, Mitch Conti, Gerrit Wilford, and Andrea Williams taking on Cyrano, Alyssa Ratkovich, Kent Nusbaum and Joe Faifer in Waiting for Lefty, Courtney Dane Mize performing part of Songs for a New World, and Gaby Fernandez and Emily Willis in Nightswim. Michael Evans is the Evening's musical director and pianist and Slick Jorgensen is the lighting designer.

Conti, Faifer, Fernandez, Martineau, Nimerfroh, Nusbaum, Ratkovich and Williams all have ISU connections, and you may remember them from work on Bloomington-Normal stages. Meldman has a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA in acting from Florida Atlantic University, Willis is a Northwestern grad, Mize has a degree from Ole Miss, Wilford studied at the other Northwestern in Iowa, and Hughes earned her BA from Indiana University in the other Bloomington.

All of which adds up to a lot of talent in one place at one time. If you're wondering why this show now, Eli offers this inspirational program note:

All of us are relatively new to Chicago. We are looking for opportunities. We are looking for artistic homes. We are looking for people to take chances on us. We have devoted our lives to our craft and we are ready to do great things within it.

You have to root for that, right? Let's hope this Evening is the first in a long line of great things for all of them!